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Thursday, October 11, 2007

My husband came home after work without doing any side jobs this evening. He's been working nonstop for weeks now, so we were thrilled when he said he'd be home for dinner tonight. He walked in from work, tired and wanting to sit down for a few minutes and relax (read - go to the bathroom for a great quantity of time.)

Upon entering the bathroom, he saw, much to his surprise, the toilet bowl filled to the brim with water. In a change of plans, he grabbed the plunger and tried to get the water to drain. No dice.

Now we live in an areas with old trees. Old trees that have roots that run for miles and miles underground and wreak havoc with the sewers. Hubby went outside, took a peek in the access hole in our yard and lo and behold, the water was up to the top. Wishing he'd just stayed at work, my husband, defeated, grabbed his tools to rod out the sewer.

Several hours pass as he grabs out tree roots and cleans out the pipes. Still the toilet wasn't flushing properly. Frustrated, he yanked the entire toilet out of the bathroom. A perfectly reasonable response to the situation, no?

He carried it outside and started flushing it with water from the hose. Finally, after much rinsing and manuevering the toilet to get it to drain, this came out...

In case you were wondering, it's not a good idea to put wads of paper towels and pencils with giant star shaped erasers in your toilet.

157 comments:

Every day is an event at your house!! You should give that hubby an extra big hug tonight!! Glad he got it figured out though. Hey did you give him something to do some power cleaning on the toilet while he had it out? I am about to take my shower doors outside for a power washing.

Word books and name books are going insane on my site for days now. It has been nice but tomorrow I will be in line at the post office to ship items out with kids in tow since there is no school here tomorrow. Wish me luck!!

Wow I get to be the first to post! Dawn I love your blog and especially like the new look- it really gives it pizazz! I wish you the very best with your writings! I read your blog even before I read my emails (I am in the Philiipines so your night is my late morning early afternoon.) I thought you may get a kick out of this email that was sent to me. Have a great day and keep on writing! God bless... KJ mother of 2 beautiful girls!

1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.2nd baby: You don't bother because you remember that last time, breathing didn't do a thing.3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month.

________________________________________________The Layette:

1st baby: You pre-wash newborn's clothes, color-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby's little bureau.2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.3rd baby:Boys can wear pink, can't they?______________________________________________________Worries:

1st baby: At the first sign of distress--a whimper, a frown--you pick up the baby.2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.______________________________________________________Pacifier:

1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby's bottle.3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.______________________________________________________Diapering:

1st baby: You change your baby's diapers every hour, whether they need it or not.2nd baby: You change their diaper every two to three hours, if needed.3rd baby: You try to change their diaper before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.____________________Activities:

1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.______________________________________________________Going Out:

1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, youcall home five times.2nd baby : Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached.3rd baby:You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.______________ ________________________________________At Home:

1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn't squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from thechildren.______________________________________________________Swallowing Coins:

1st child: When first child swallows a coin, you rush thechild to the hospital and demand x-rays.2nd child: When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass.3rd child: When third child swallows a coin, you deduct it from his allowance!______________________________________________________

Pass this on to everyone you know who has children . . . or everyone who KNOWS someone who has had children . (The older the mother, the funnier this is!)

EEEWWWWWW!!! LOL.... Reminds me of the time my downstairs toilet was blocking up got the plumber in and yup up came a giant-sized Lego piece.......never did solve that mystery as we didn't have any pieces like that and neither did our neighbour whose boys used to play with mine all the time

Wow! That brings back memories of a few years ago when my (then) 4 year old enjoyed his favorite game "Will it flush". At one point, both of our toilets were having so many problems flushing, (and we were so sick of using the plunger) that we finally called the plumber. After numerous attempts to unclog the toilet using all of his magic tools, he finally removed the toilet from the floor, and pulled out 3 lids from the soft soap bottles. (you know, the kind with the pump attatched)Do you have any idea how much it costs to have the plumber remove and replace two toilets? I also remember the time I walked into the bathroom to see a banana floating in the toilet. I ask the nearest child "Why is there a banana floating in the toilet?" His reply "because it didn't flush." Oh, how silly of me, that makes perfect sense. Also, I have 4 children that I remember giving birth to, but apparently I have two more living here that I have never seen in person. Their names are "I don't know" and "It wasn't me."I love the new look of you blog, such a cute illustration!Keep up the good work!Jill

LMAO - my husband left for Honduras this past Tuesday AM, and Monday night we had plans to just sit and talk and what not while the kids were asleep before it was time to go to the airport. Instead he spent 5 hours trying to unclog one off the toilets in our house. He too eventually took the whole toilet outback at 12 midnight with the hose and finally got what was in there out. 3 hair comb thingies - those 3-4" comb things that stay in your hair to hold it back, and also big regular comb broken into 3, and a toilet paper roll. I am sure my husband was wishing he had left the day before, LOL.

Oh my gosh that happened to us three times it was tooth brushes, baby toys and bath toys that were flushed. My dad came and helped the first 2 times but the last time my DH (dear husband) took a sledge hammer to it and it was a baby teething ring that acted as a flapper thing. Anyway by that time we had decided to buy a new one as we couldn't figure out (IE flush out the problem) and low and behold the toy and it never would have come out it was stuck good. We haven't had a problem since. But DD(dear daughter)hasn't gone through that phase (maybe she won't since the other 3 are boys) But after that the bath toys were not allowed in the bathroom except at bath time otherwise they are stored in the bedroom and no little ones allowed. and toothbrushes go in the drawer so you(IE kids can't see them and get ideas.I love your blog I don't have as many kids but my boys are just like your youngest. I just hope my daughter is calmer good luck and keep writing melinda

So, here I am sitting up at 11:05 p.m. (PST) reading your blog and laughing hysterically as always! My 15 month old who has been teething for the lat 18 months (or so it seems) went to bed without a hitch tonight and has been sleeping for a good 2 hours and what am I doing? Getting much needed sleep myself... No of course not! I once again have my head buried in the computer. It's a disease I tell you! Thanks for enabling me! Haha! I love your stories... the pencil in the toilet is a riot! I'm sure your husband didn't think so, poor guy... keep on sharing! Take care!

This made me laugh so much - not at you but with you!! Luckily my kids have never put a pencil with a star shaped or indeed any other shaped rubber on the top down the toilet, but when we bought this place it had been rented out & the tennant was very unhappy with having to move & put concrete down the pan, which we didn't discover until after my hubby had done a poo & it all came out & over the floor :-(

Have to say I love reading your blog, you have a fabulous way of putting your days into words which always make me smile & at times laugh right out loud!

Hoo, boy - maybe he should come on over and share a beer with my husband. Last year, when Rachel was going through her toilet stuffing phase, Larry dreaded coming home in the evening. There was always something to dislodge or else a plumber's bill to pay. And the stupidest, cheapest things always generated the biggest bills. The 60-dollar cellphones slid right down, but the 25-cent tub toy was what got caught in the trap and wouldn't come out without smashing the stupid toilet. Read more (if you dare) at The More The Messier (www.suburbancorrespondent.blogspot.com). It's under the Popular Posts column on the left somewhere.

My neighbors just had the same problem with a couple of Muppets swimming in their toilet. Turns out they sell some sort of toilet at Home Depot which has a wider than normal system, meaning it's supposedly virtually impossible to clog. You may want to check it out...it probably won't be the last time that happens, right?

My husband's family used to clog the toilet every time they came over. I have NO idea what they were doing in there. I had special cheap TP I used to put in the bathroom whenever they came to visit.

Been there with a toy plastic credit card for a Barbie cash register. A $300 water bill later (mind you my average bill is under $40/month) the guy at Home Depot suggests, when snaking the toilet didn't work, to simply try a wire hanger. It worked. The girls were grounded, the cash register was thrown out, and no toys were allowed in the bathroom ever again.

Poor hubby!! About a year ago my now 8 yr old woke me up SCREAMING that his little brother had flushed Harry Potter. Evidently they were playing hide and go seek with Harry Potter figures and Sam decided that the best place to "hide" Harry was in the toilet. ????? I mean...ok....so Jake definitely couldn't "find" Harry so I guess that made Sam the winner...but come on...the TOILET? Where do kids think these things up?! FYI Harry goes down a whole lot smoother then a pencil with a star eraser...might wanna let your kids know. :)

Been there, done that with the whole tree root situation. Chances are the roots were doing most of the blocking but the pencil didn't help much. When we moved into our house 30+ years ago, we were told NEVER to put anything but TP into the toilet and never did...the tree roots did all the blocking. My husband got really good at plumbing until we got rid of the tar paper pipes and got REAL ones. Tell your husband we feel his pain!! Chris

Ouch! All that work, all that time, just to find out it was the kids doing something they shouldn't. Thankfully that hasn't happened here, but our youngest insists his cowboy Woody doll likes to scuba dive in there frequently.

But looking on the bright side, you've got one cleaned system that should flush many objects for years to come.

OMIGOSH! That makes me think of the day that our toddler boys (only 15 months apart and just old enough to lure each other into all kinds of odd and interesting choices) stuffed sports socks into our ancient toilet and thus into our even more ancient septic system. The stench of backed up fumes was unbearable and the contortions required by first The Boss and then The Plumber(!) were worthy of circus auditions.

That night, The Boss and the little gang members had a big talk about what belongs in a potty and what does not. That weekend, The Boss replaced the toilet. That spring, we replaced the septic system - seems it was providential, the stuffing of the socks. Allowed The Plumber to share (in great, gross detail!) with The Boss just how old and how full our septic tank was.

Hope the rest of the hubby's night at home was more restful than the start! And hope he got is quiet bathroom time finally. :)

Yeah for hubby who cleaned out the tree roots!!! This means he won't have to do it for a long while!!!

Just out of curiosity, are you putting all these itms in shadow boxes and displaying them in your home (the pokemon cards, the baseball, the petrified hot dog, etc.). They may be valuable one day. Then again, they may just make interesting conversation pieces.

Wow...the first to comment today. That reminds me of the time I went into the restroom to find something odd looking in the toilet. Luckily nobody had flushed yet....and to my surprise to pull out an extension to our clipper set. Guess our 2 year old was afraid we were going to cut his hair for him....

Been There - Done That 2x's!!!!! My 3yr old flushed his passies down the toilet TWICE!!! We unfortunately had to replace the toilet because the whole thing broke when my husband tried to retrieve the passy the second time. Talk about FRUSTRATION and what a Huge Mess!!!

My son once tried to flush a juice box down the toilet. That resulted in pulling out the toilet and buying a new one. And while we were at it we painted the bathroom. And since the toilet was already pulled out and we were painting we were a little less stringent with putting cleaning products away. My 4 year old (the one who tried to flush the juice box) got the clorox clean up and was spraying his baby brother with it. So, a juice box resulted in a new toilet, a new paint job in the bathroom, a ruined baby outfit and chair and a trip to the ER. (Baby was fine.) There. The troubles we go to as Mommies!

Dawn,Did any of your kids own up to it? That must have been SOMEONE'S "special" pencil! I enjoy reading your blog and can identify with your family. I only have 2, but they've done their share of chaos production.Hope the toilet is back in the house and working properly now.All the best,Deb

Funny! It's too bad hubby didn't get a chance to relax. Reminds me of the time the same thing happened in our first home (Rolling Meadows). The toilet clogged up a two hours before we were going to a fancy work-related dinner dance. Not fun, especially since wastewater from the sink also was backing up. Not only did we have mega tree roots, and a broken sewer line, but the former owners' darling children had been dropping everything you can imagine into the toilet bowl for years. Out came a number of Hot Wheels cars, three Barbie doll heads, dozens of bobbie pins, Q-tips, and pencils. It's a wonder the toilet didn't revolt sooner.Your husband sounds like a gem - I hope you keep him.

Not how I would want to spend the evening either. As my sister and BIL discovered, it's not good to leave their toddler alone with the diaper pail in the bathroom. They had to replace the toilet because their son got their daughter's diaper stuck in the bend part. And they only had 1 working toilet.

LOL!!!I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you. A few years ago, my dh had the exact same response to a non-flushing toilet. What emerged was a hot wheels car that had been there for a long time. It was apparently the reason the, then two year old who was potty training was afraid to flush the toilet!

Two weeks ago we had the plumber over (not for a nice chat and coffee). He removed the toilet from the wall and snaked away searching for 4 toothbrush heads, a toddler toothbrush, large lego block and the drain stop to the sink. Maybe you can solve our mystery, How did they get there???

Oh - you are not alone on that one! Our "First of five" used to flush toys down the toilet trying to figure out where they go. After three times removing the toilet from the floor and cleaning it out - I finally got the good notion to show him in detail how a toilet works, and when the "business" is done, how it gets through the toilet and into the sewers...

We also have issues with "Four of Five" doing the same thing...

All total - I have had to remove the toilet and clean it out four different times...

Large cans of spices dont go down the toilet well either.Years ago we came home from a night out to find that our daughter had put cans of spices(can and all) down our toilet and then flushed. At first we didnt know that was the offending blockage but after trying every other possible solution, my hubby took out the toilet ad did some cleaning of the curvy passages (technical name ) of the toilet what he found at that point was the spice cans!We never hired that babysitter again!

As an FYI: we have found that "Little People" from Fisher Price are not good to flush, but can at least be seen before needing to take the toilet outside. Clumping cat litter, however, is a whole other story! I'd rather have had the pencil and paper!

Dawn, you are so lucky to have a handy DH at home...mine would have flushed and flushed and we would have been swimming outside!! I love your new blog design, it did take some getting used to and I am so happy to see your baby covered in chocolate again!! what a doll!! Thanks for the daily laugh!!

How is your toilet so clean? We are a family of 8- 5 boys, 3 girls-and my toilet is never that white! And my husband did not think this was a funny post, as we have had a similar incident only with wipes and hot wheels. I on the other hand laughed until I almost peed my pants. It's always nice to find out your kids aren't the only ones that do unexplainable things and might possibly be normal! Thanks for the laughs!

And here I was ready to complain because my 2-year-old took off his diaper and pooped on the floor this morning. Knock on wood we haven't had plastic in the toilet yet, but EVERYBODY else I know has, so it's only a matter of time. Well, there was the toothbrush incident, but it didn't get flushed. Immediately disposed of, yes, but not flushed. I'm afraid to ask, but is that your only bathroom?

I am laughing so hard right now. Been there done that ourselves. My husband yanked the toilet out as well, only to find a couple Thomas the Tank Engine's had been deposited "to get washed", according to our then 2 year old. A couple weeks later, we had the same problem and once again more toys found. At that point my dh got fed up and went to Lowe's and bought a toilet that claims to be able to suck down 15 golf balls in a single flush. We haven't tested it out (at least not to my knowledge...lol) but since then no more problems! Thanks for the laugh!

EWWW!Just an FYI, It's also imperative that you explain to your newly potty trained child that if they have an accident in their underwear, it is only the POOP that gets flushed, not the entire pair of underware!

DH spent a similar weekend digging up our backyard to get to the cleanouts after my first son flushed his undies.

OMG! My husband and I were missionaries for the first 7 years of our marriage and I remember when we first arrived in South Africa we lived with another missionary family and they had 2 boys. Our toilet (yes we had indoor plumbing in our rondoval) became stopped up one day and when cleaned out we discoverd a small composition notebook from one of the boys school work had been torn apart and stuffed down the toilet! That was only the first of a long list of things that those 2 boys found to get into. I can only imagine you with 6.

I follow your blog daily and am loving keeping up with your adventures in parenting. You are great and always put a smile on my face and thanksgiving in my heart that my boys are now grown. It does get better and they are all the greatest joy (and entertainment) in the world.

Blessings to you and your hubby! Keep up the great work and don't ever lose your sense of humor at life!

Being the brave Mom that I am I stuck my hand in the toilet and felt something there.After a few minutes tugging and pulling what comes out but a nice red delicious apple.My son is now 14 and we still remind him of his apple flushing days.

YIKES! I totally understand. Currently, one of the kids, I have six, has been dropping coins into the toilet as a joke. Whoever it is, no confessions yet, must want to hear about someone "fishing" them out. It's been going on for months. Tell your husband we're sorry. The straw that broke my husband's back was a few years ago when one son was mad at his brother and decided to flush some of his prized Matchbox cars! It was an absolute nightmare to unclog. My man said, "It just might be time to put a tin can in the backyard and call it good!"

Wow! I'm the first to comment! Such an honor :) Your husband sounds just like mine! Of course you should pull up the whole toilet - it makes perfect sense! Thanks for all your laughs and glimpses into your life!

OMG that was really funny... poor guy your husband!! I can so realte to the "Murphy's Law" of it all tho I can't say we have had weird objects in the toilet as of yet. Thanks for the chuckle. A sense of humor is so important nowadays and I keep forgetting that I have a funny bone!! LOL

Ha ha ha! ROFL This happened to my sister one time. They could not get it cleared out. So my dad ripped out the toilet, and lo and behold, there was a my mom's comb. A comb that not only had been missing for months, but had caused many fights over "who lost mom's comb?"

Well the upside is that he's capable enough to resolve it and it didn't cost you a zillion dollars to make this discovery. If left up to my husband we'd probably end up neeind a new toilet, among other things...

My husband is a plumber. He agrees and preaches that there are certain things that just don't flush well. Too bad our kids didn't get the message. Other things besides pencils and paper towels that don't flush well include and are not limited to.... diapers, remotes, keys, duplo blocks, elmo, and siblings. (speaking from experience)

We went through this several years ago when my now 7 year old flushed a set of baby teether keys down the toilet. Requiring the toilet be completely removed.

And just a few months ago, our 3 year old did this to BOTH toilets in our home. BOTH! At the same time!One toilet removal revealed a pencil and some dental floss.The other was blocked by the "gun" from a large Transformers Starscream.The worst part of our story though? The husband let the toilet slip out of his hand on our patio as we were trying to remove the blockage and it crashed and shattered all over, recap here: http://www.mylittletribe.com/2007/05/drive_by_post.html

OH NO!!! You are so lucky to have a handy toilet. That problem would have cost us $300+. We have never had toys in the toilet - YET. But I'm knocking on wood - it's bound to happen. Especially with boys. Do girls ever flush things? :-)

OMG...you have a husband who can actually FIX stuff???? Without a PLUMBER?

Just lately, in addition to paying a plumber, it's been my unfortunate experience to ALSO have to call in a floor contractor to replace the water-logged sub-floor and tile after my DH arbitrarily decided that the toilet's wax ring needed to be replaced.

Along with a PLETHERA of other unfortunate handy-hubby events (including a 2-wk medical leave of absence from work involving an at-home table saw injury) I visibly CRINGE whenever I see him approach the house with even as little as a SCREWDRIVER!

Unbeknownst to us (and a baffling mystery to the 2 separate plumbing agencies we employed) our daughter, at age two, flushed a clear, plastic bologna cover into the potty.

As it made it's way through our plumbing system, it subsequently lodged itself in the sewer pipe, creating a FLAP. Plumbing auger/snakes merely PUSHED the flap aside, but sooner or later, the problem reappeared.

Solution: Roto-Rooter with their scary Sentinel-type (The Matrix) cut and grind, search and destroy implement bought the nearly unrecognizable culprit to the "surface."

Since then, I can't even LOOK at, nor have I purchased, a single slice of bologna!

My first born, now a 40 year old mother of two teenage sons, didn't like her baby shoes....so naturally the best way to get rid of them was to flush them....and my electric shaver at the same time.

Her little brother (a couple of years later) loved to watch the water swirl when he flushed the toilet. I heard continuous flushing one day. Walked into the bathroom to see him flushing with one hand while rolling the toilet paper into the toilet with his right. That kid had great hand-eye coordination.

My hubby wound up having to yank our toilet on Valentines Day after my 2 yr old flushed what we later found out to be 2 mega bloks people. It was not the valentines day evening he had been imagining. I feel your pain :)

OMG! Been there, done that! My 4 year old flushed a bar of soap last year. After it flooded the bathroom, we ended up having to replace the toilet completely, rip up the carpeting and replace the flooring. What a nightmare!

45 years ago, when my sister was 4, she put the kitten, a flip-flop and a doll dish in the toilet and tried to plunge them down. My mom rescued the kitten and the flip-flop, but didn't know about the doll dish, which acted like a valve: the toilet would back up, we'd plunge and it would clear. Except when a quantity of solid matter was introduced...My dad pulled our toilet when he got home, too--and my mom made the three of us stand in the front yard until he finished, so we wouldn't hear him swearing.Did your popularity come with the Pokemon sale? You are very good: you remind me of Jean Kerr (Please Don't Eat the Daisies) or Erma Bombeck. Every mother can probably relate--including sister with the plunger, who sent me to the Pokemon post. I think you probably will get a book contract, and will be successful, if you can only find the time to write. (Do local papers still run this kind of thing as a regular feature? Most successful domestic humor writers got their starts that way.)

Well its unfortunate that obviously all parents go through the same thing. Now ofcourse while my dear husband is fishing the 'object' out ,he is swearing no other family goes through this ! So I will have to save this one and yeah sometime next week when we are attempting to figure out whats stuffed down the toliet this time,I will have to pull your blog up and show him we are truely not the only ones !And my lovely friend who has not experinced children yet, she thinks your blog is very gross. I can't help but to link her to say LOOK this is ME ! My kids do these things to !She hates me today !HEHE!She now has decided to skip having children . This blog is something we should send out to schools for all the teens to see... maybe they would rethink and wait a few years before doing the deed !

Im really staring at your spotless non pee stained toliet.How did you do it? Did you scrub it before he took the picture?

My in-laws had to tear up their entire yard after I flushed a few tampons down the toilet. they got stopped on tree roots and effed up the entire system. I am not sure they ever forgave me for that and it happened over 7 years ago!

Oh yes, we've been there! It always seems to happen when hubby is tired and grumpy and just wants to relax, too! Last time we found the lid off a container...but not until after hubby used the plunger, a snake, and then - finally - took the toilet apart. Toilet locks just don't work, do they!

So funny!! A couple months ago we had a plastic fish in our potty!! Apparantly my 2 year old felt that fish go in water. It was a really round squeaky fish and when we took the toilet off, it was there, perfectly settled in the round drain at the bottom of the toilet! UGH!!

Your poor husband. Seriously, pulling out the toilet was above and beyond. And then he still has to go to the hardware store for one of those rings to re-install the toilet. The real question, of course, is who flushed the pencil down the toilet. I know what you'll hear, but Not Me doesn't actually live in your house.

did you know that gala apples are just the right size to block the drain in the toilet and NOT go in so far that you need the help of a plumber? you just get the honor of stick your arm in toilet water to your elbow.... (i'm still having extra hot showers over that one).

I was sitting here reading the comments and decided to ask my 15 year old daughter just exactly WHAT items she has flushed as I could not recall them all and she says "do you mean the time we had to replace the toilet?" oh dear... so I say yes ... she says oh mom that time was an apple! we replaced the toilet just a couple years ago!!!!!!! then she says oh yeah I flushed air fresheners ya know the car kind! and the list goes on... hair bows, dominos, and GI joes oh my! we are becoming poets! actually I was the GI joe flusher when I was about 5 I recall my uncle having to go to the pipe in the yard with the HUGE snake and retrieve JOE... memoriessssss

What a riot. When my daughter was two she came down the stairs (she was supposed to be in bed) to tell us the potty was broke... up we go to find toys in there... she had put all of her foam bath toys in, an apparently flushed, hubby pulled them out one by one, letters and numbers began to pile up. The whole time he was "what in the WORLD made you think you could flush your toys!!" When he thought he was done she looked sweetly at dear, ole frustrated dad and said, ever so innocently... "you forgot my green frog." www.xanga.com/juejee

after i posted my story my DD reminded me of our trip to Missouri on sept 20 1997, for my fathers wedding...we stayed at a BRAND NEW hotel just off of Lindburg near the airport, and within 20 minutes we had a FLOOD coming from our bathroom, DD had flushed SOMETHING... shes thinking it may have been a towel!!

I am so impressed that your husband not only has the tools needed to get tree roots out of the sewer line, but actually know how to use them! In our house there would be a lot of plunging, cursing and shaking of heads followed by a call to a plumber.

Hello Dawn!!!I am so pleased to have found you out there in cyberspace. One of my girlfriends found your pokemon card page on ebay and actually thought that it was me until the very end when you said you were shipping from Illinois. We share a similar sense of humor and a way with words. I too, have 6 kids- 3 boys and 3 girls- under the age of 8. I laughed until I cried about your shopping trip- mostly because I could relate to every single detail you included; particularly the part about "you have your hands full." I swear, I hear that so often that I actually use it as a password. Anyway- I feel we're kindred and I just wanted to say thanks for the laughs. I had begun to believe I was the only person in the world dealing with these things. I blog at aberjaber.blogspot.com Stop by sometime.

I understand! My little brother once flushed a rather large plastic boat down the toilet! We couldn't figure out why it would flush some times and not others... Until Dad finnaly did the same. I gotta laugh now. [Or until mine does it!]

I remember the time i had to rip a toilet out of the floor. For two days i was trying to unclog the sucker with a $5 snake3 from walmart, telling the wife that the kids had to have flushed a toy or something. she boldly denied such a charge, she had been keeping an eye on them all morning. so finally i got a wax ring and pulled it up. sure enough...a 3"x1" wooden domino. to this day i still like to point out that she was wrong, and i was right. then she reminds me that even a blind squirrel can find an acorn

I am an ebay recruit. I wanted to say that I have 2 Houdinis who escape the cart seatbelts and I have bought apples bruised by my very own son on the grocery store floor. We also once had to take our toilet onto the lawn because of slow flushing and...we found a pen. Craziness sometimes being a Mom huh. And I am only at 3!! Sounds like you are a good one though.

My good friend and neighbor came over and told me her darling daughter had flushed an apple down the toilet-whole. This plugged it up good (no water of any kind was going through). The 2 of us (and 8 kids) tried to use a plumbers snake to dislodge the apple but only succeeded in coring the darn thing. Our next try was to take out the toilet and run a hose backwards up the gooseneck, which worked finally. Then we had to figure out how to reinstall the toilet. This was the first plumbing job for either of us. I guess we did fairly well as the toilet worked after we were done.Kids, gotta love um.

Small world, by good friend and neighbor was just over today and saying her children's bathroom toilet has to be plunged after every flush. She knows the problem, her son dropped her teenage daughters' tube of lipgloss in the toliet and flushed it. This has been going on for months. Her in-laws are arriving in three days and will be using that bathroom. So the dilemma is does she call a plumber, do the job herself( I have knicked named her Handy Andy, she is able to do any fix up jobs around a house) or let her in-laws plunge after every flush!! I sent her the blog and she just laughed, she is not the only one in this dilemma.